Law isn't only created by legislatures, there is also case law. And the legal reasoning behind some cases can be used in other entirely unrelated cases.
Right, but at some point, the law is created, and rights are derived from that. Other laws could have been created, and other rights would have followed.
Surely, you're not claiming that Common Law is written in the fabric of reality?
Now Glenn I can see how someone from the "communist kingdom of Sweden" might not understand case law but I see no reason you shouldn't understand that not all law is created by legislatures.
We don't get case law per se here; precedent is a part of court decisions, but generally the law as it is written is the most important part, and the law is generally re-written rather than re-interpreted. In cases where an existing law is ambiguous, the Supreme Court of Sweden can create precedent and issue directives on how the law should be interpreted. The most important difference is supposedly that in Sweden, newer precedents are considered more valuable than older ones; i.e. the older a precedent is, the less relevant it is considered to the judgment.
Of course, that is only scratching the surface of the difference between the systems.
No. The right was taken away and no compelling legal argument could be found to justify continued infringement. The right always existed.
We can't possibly enumerate every right we have. I am allowed to own toys even though the Constitution didn't specifically enumerate that right. If a law were passed to make toy ownership illegal, it would still be challenged as infringing on my Constitutionally protected rights, just like abortion was.
Hmm, then I suppose you don't agree with WildCat?
WildCat said:
Like I said, maybe [drinking] is a right and the only thing keeping it from being recognized as such is no one has made the right case for it. Can you make a case?
Of course, the amendment process has never before been used to take away a right. People like having rights.
Or is there some key difference between drinking and owning toys that makes toys something that would obviously be upheld as a right, but drinking would not?
Or perhaps we really do agree - in my view, "rights" and their "recognition" is a mere legal fiction used in the process of the courts to establish what the people are allowed and not allowed to do, what legislation may or may not be passed, etc according to the traditional practices of Common Law? That is: rights do not "exist" in any real sense; rather they are in Common Law assumed to when establishing case law. In a somewhat more real sense, society may be said to grant people rights by protecting and upholding them, such as granting people the right to property by protecting them from theft.
